What age do you all think it is a good age to start introducing a GSD puppy to other dogs? Attachment 171946Im thinkin my lil guy is too young (about 8 weeks) but id like to start socializing him when its right!

Most definitely expose him to other pups/dogs once he is fully vaccinated.

Consider how you want to socialise him and work out the best way to give him good experiences.

With my next pup, I will avoid the local dog park and enrol him into obedience training from about 16 weeks, there he will learn leash manners, obedience and the fact that not all dogs need to be greeted, depending on the other pups there I may allow him a couple minutes of off leash play after class. I will also expose him to older very stable dogs. Other than that I plan to train him to ignore other dogs and that he does not need to play with them, meet them in order to be happy - we will do all sorts of fun stuff together.

Oskar's Human

01-26-2014 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harry and Lola
(Post 4905866)

Your little one is just so cute, is he a sable coat?

Most definitely expose him to other pups/dogs once he is fully vaccinated.

Consider how you want to socialise him and work out the best way to give him good experiences.

With my next pup, I will avoid the local dog park and enrol him into obedience training from about 16 weeks.

Yes he is a sable and thank you. I am a bit partial but find him cute as well :) 16 weeks sounds about right to me as well. I am looking for training classes but am not sure how I feel about treat based training, so I am having difficulty, but I suppose that's a completely different thread lol.

It's a personal choice, I've trained with check chains/corrections and reward based, personally I prefer and have had great success with reward based training where puppy/dog is rewarded with either treats or an item of value such as a ball each time the task/behaviour is achieved. After a while rewarding is then slowly phased out so that puppy/dog is not rewarded for each and every task/behaviour, but rather rewarded sporadically, that way he will know that he may get a reward so will still do what you want just in case a treat is given and you don't have to have treats in your pocket all the time. They never know when they will get the treat and if you need to recall in an emergency, based on this training they will still come to you because they know they may be rewarded.

carmspack

01-26-2014 01:09 AM

this pup just left an environment of dog to dog interaction saturation. the next step to balanced , enjoyable companion , socialization needs to focus on transferring to YOU "human"